Wall-E

PIXAR studios can do no wrong and their latest offering is no exception. Wall-E is unquestionably a masterpiece of animation. It may also be a great science fiction movie. It is certainly a great children's movie and one that most adults will also enjoy. PIXAR's achievement here is to tell a story of quite complex ideas with almost no dialogue in an enjoyable and highly entertaining way. There is no question that it demands more of the viewer than the average animation, but a little thought and concentration will be richly rewarded. The miracle is that PIXAR has created two characters, Wall-E and Eva, that despite having no recognisably human features, are not only able to convey a huge range of emotions, but in fact have a terrific romantic chemistry. This is frankly astonishing. The set pieces are magnificent. The scenes on the devastated, garbage strewn Earth have a fascinating beauty and the space ship is a wondrous sight of bright, gleaming technology. I could go on praising this movie, but I think my eight year old son said it best: "It was funny, sad and very cool". Indeed.

In the PIXAR tradition Wall-E is accompanied by an excellent short cartoon, entitled Presto. Its about a battle of wits between a magician and his stage rabbit and hilarious.

Laura

This is a strange little movie. made in 1944 by Otto Preminger, who both produces and directs. It stars a very young Vincent Price and a not so young Clifton Webb. They really are the stars despite top billing going to Gene Tierney and Dana Andrews, whose characters seem mere foils to the camp Webb and country bumpkin, turned playboy, Price. The plot is highly unlikely. Its twists and turns seem contrived and yet this is great fun to watch. Its all very stylish, set in luxurious New York apartments and played with great drama.

The Leopard

Unless you are a real lover of the period piece or perhaps a dedicated student of the Risorgimento period of Italian history I suspect you may find it a challenge to get all the way through this one. I made it about two thirds of the way through the ball scene at the end before hitting fast forward. I could hardly believe how much of it there was left. At just over three hours, The Leopard is a long film, but it’s not so much the length as the pace that is the problem. Nothing much happens, but it happens very slowly. Burt Lancaster was a controversial choice to play the Sicilian aristocrat who, realising that the nobles’ grip on power is slipping, encourages his nephew (Alain Delon) to marry the mayor’s daughter (Claudia Cardinale). The mayor is not of the nobles, he (horrors) made his money from property development and is not 100% au fait with dinner party etiquette. I’m sure there is much symbolism here and indeed by the end of the ball we feel acutely the weariness of the aristocratic revelers as they put themselves through yet another tortuous Mazurka. Better value elsewhere.

The Long Goodbye

This is Robert Altman’s take on the private eye Philip Marlowe, the character featured in Raymond Chandler's crime novels. Marlowe is the ultimate film-noir private eye and has been played by a list of top drawer actors including Humphrey Bogart, James Caan, James Gardner, Robert Mitchum, Robert Montgommery and Dick Powel. Here it is Elliot Gould’s job and he does it very well. A softer, slightly bumbling Marlowe, who stands out in trippy 1973 Los Angeles as a very square man in a suit and narrow neck tie. Marlowe’s values, which include loyalty and generosity, are impeccably established in the opening scenes, where in the middle of the LA night he drives to a store to buy his cat food, famously goes through an elaborate routine into tricking the cat into believing its eating its favourite brand and then unquestioningly drives a friend to Mexico. It’s a cracking yarn, very funny in parts and with all the twists and turns you would expect. Mark Rydell is excellent as the evil and clearly unbalanced hood, Marty Augustine. One of my favourite parts is that the only song that you hear in the movie is The Long Goodbye, endlessly reprised in various forms.

The Bank Job

The Bank Job is at least partially based on fact. It involves the theft of the contents of around 400 safety deposit boxes from a bank in Marylebone in 1971. Allegedly the contents included some rather naughty photos of Princess Margaret and a ledger which recorded details of bribery payments made to the police by a Soho sleaze baron. Princess Margaret's private life was for many years the subject of intense speculation by media and Royal-watchers. She owned a house on the Caribbean island of Mustique, where the photos appear to have been taken. There were plenty allegations of wild parties and drug taking. In the Bank Job both the government and the sleaze baron pursue the robbers. It seems many people are a little cagey about what they store in their bank boxes as out of the 400 odd victims, more than 100 would not reveal the contents. This is an enjoyable yarn with some very credible performances, a few twists and a bit of humour.

Double Bill

Is this the ultimate “Grindhouse” double bill? Both Russ Meyer’s Faster Pussycat Kill! Kill! and Richard C Sarafian’s Vanishing Point are heavily referenced in Grindhouse, the manufactured double bill cooked up by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez.
These films are both Exploitation classics. Exploitation film is a type of film that eschews the expense of quality productions in favour of making films inexpensively, attracting viewers by exciting their more prurient interests. "Exploitation" is a term in the movie industry meaning promotion or advertising. Exploitation films rely heavily on the lurid advertising of their content rather than the intrinsic quality of the film.

Exploitation films may feature forbidden sex, wanton violence, drug use, nudity, freaks, gore, the bizarre, destruction, rebellion and mayhem. Such films have existed since the earliest days of moviemaking, but they were popularized in the 1960s with the general relaxing of cinematic taboos in the U.S. and Europe. (http://www.wikipedia.com/)

Made in 1965 Pussycat has around 6 years on Vanishing Point (1971) and is in black and white. Despite this, it is the more sophisticated of the two movies . Meyer’s take on the empowered woman and dominating female figure is fascinating. Its hard to imagine anyone finding the Tura Satana character, with her large but immovable breasts, sharp slashes of makeup and biker outfit attractive. Nonetheless, she represents a take on femininity, which had not been explored in the cinema before Russ Meyer and hardly as effectively since.

Vanishing Point is the story of a strange, obsessive odyssey by a man driven like a lemming by an inexplicable need to keep on going. Having just driven 1,500 miles non-stop from California to Colorado, Sarafian's sullenly uncommunicative anti-hero, Kowalski (Barry Newman), pauses just long enough to grab a supply of bennies, accept a bet that he won't make it back in 15 hours, and zooms off again. The memory flash backs are excruciating but the cinematography amongst the desert locations is magnificent. Barry Newman went on play the lead in the legal TV series Petrocelli. Vanishing Point is the source of the legendary white Dodge Challenger referenced in Tarantino’s Death Proof. It does look like a hell of a ride.

If...

An anti-establishment satire based on a group of “crusaders” who rebel against the confines of middle class mores at an English boys’ boarding school. The film was controversial and divisive when released in 1968. Now it seems like a bit of harmless lunacy. It’s still funny and fun to watch, but I can imagine that it provoked quite strong feelings in its day. It stars Malcolm McDowell who went on to make A Clockwork Orange, a role which is almost a natural progression from the angry and disaffected young Mick Travis he plays here. The film is an odd combination of realism and fantasy. It’s hard to say exactly where it crosses over from one to the other. Do the scenes of rebellion actually occur or are they simply in the minds of the protagonists? In one of the strangest moments the Headmaster insists that three of the boys apologise to the Bishop for a prank. He then opens a large drawer in his office revealing the Bishop in repose. He sits up to accept the boys’ apology. The young female character (billed simply as “the girl”) seems to magically pop in and out of scenes, very much as though she is there only in the thoughts of the boys. McDowell and Director Lindsay Anderson revisit the Mick Travis character in a later movie, Britannia Hospital, which is now on my ‘must see’ list.

My Neighbour Totoro

My three young sons (10, 8 and 6) are fairly sophisticated cinema goers. They are probably allowed an above average degree of freedom in what they watch. So they have seen all the recent block busters, including movies that some may consider too edgy, such as Lord of the Rings and the new Batman series. So it is testament to the excellence of My Neighbour Totoro that this simple animation impressed them more than most. It is quite simply one of the best children’s movies you will ever see. It contains no violence, no villains and no real conflict. Yet it is spellbinding. It tells the story of two young girls who move with their father to a house in the country. They encounter some strange, but completely benign, creatures in the nearby forest. These creatures come to their aid when the younger sister gets lost on route to visiting her mother in hospital. As far as plot goes, that’s pretty much it. The characters are drawn in the well-known style of Japanese anime and so are not at all realistic in appearance, but very realistic in their actions. The backgrounds and settings are very detailed and beautiful. Look at the clouds and sunsets that are rendered in a watercolour style. The scenes in the rain are particularly effective. This film is from the legendary Hayao Miyazaki and the equally legendary Ghibli Studios. They have brought us other gems like Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle.

Vivre Sa Vie

Vivre Sa Vie (My Life to Live) – the life of a Parisian prostitute told in twelve distinct episodes in Jean-Luc Godard’s distinctive style. The girl is played by his wife, Ana Karina, who reminds one a bit of Louise Brooks, with her helmet of hair, porcelain skin and fine features. She deserts her child and husband for a chance at making a living in the movies. Of course, this never works out and she slips into prostitution, which seems a relatively easy option. The rules of the profession are laid our matter of factly in a Q&A session with her pimp set to a tabloid of her daily encounters. It’s all totally unsentimental and somewhat cold. The film ends unexpectedly and brutally. I didn’t find a great deal of satisfaction here. I expect there are hidden truths lost in the translation of the dialogue and Godard’s camera work is very clever and lends an unusual perspective.